Mr. Turner became very much interested in the Harris boy. He recognized the lad’s ability, for very frequently he found unsigned paragraphs, quite good in quality, in his paper, which had been composed by the printer boy Harris, who inserted them as he set up the type. Mr. Turner gave the boy free access to his very large and splendid library. When Joel Chandler was not seated, during leisure hours, in the chimney corner of a cabin in the negro quarters, listening to negro folk-lore, he was delving deep into the best literature of all ages. He lived so completely with the great masters in the library, that it is said, that this quite largely influenced his charming literary style in years to come.

Here on the plantation, in the negro cabins, he came, through the stories, to feel the emotions of the negro. No one has ever been so capable of putting himself in another’s place as has Joel Chandler Harris. He became possessed of all the curious knowledge of the negro, he learned of dogs and horses, he knew the path of the red stream in the swamp, and the way of the wild folk in the woods. In fact, one writer has gone so far as to say, that had Joel Chandler Harris not spent these boyhood days in the plantation home of Joseph A. Turner, there would have been no “Uncle Remus” with all that he now means to literature.

In 1876, Mr. Harris was invited to take a place on the paper called “The Constitution,” published at Atlanta, Georgia. Samuel Small was then writing humorous sketches for this paper. Small suddenly resigned. His sketches had been very popular, and the editor immediately looked around for some one who could continue the work. Mr. Harris was given the place. He went about his new task with much foreboding. He was steeped in the quaint stories of the plantation, but would the people accept these? He resolved to make the attempt, and then came the Uncle Remus stories for their first appearance.

The stories grew in popularity, and for the same reason that made Æsop’s fables an imperishable classic, these stories have taken their permanent place in literature. They were the simple stories that had been linked with the thoughts and emotions since earliest time, and have now, for the first time, been put in artistic form, by one who had so entered into the life of the negro, that he was able to express the negro’s emotions in the negro’s way. In quoting from an article on Joel Chandler Harris in “The Bookman,” Volume 27, the author says, “When Mr. Harris chose for his subject, the plantation negro, he had a character of much subtility to deal with. His subject is a creature of extremes, carelessly happy one day, deeply despondent the next, which characteristic has sprung from his very helplessness; with a never failing sense of humor, which acts as a continual balance wheel. He is a being, whose mystical side has been highly developed, and one to whom the “creeturs” have become brothers and sisters, being endowed by him, with human virtues and vices.”

“Uncle Remus” gave to literature and the world a new type of negro, that of a good kind-hearted, sympathetic old man, who was willing to spend hours in telling stories to a little boy. So little is said of Uncle Remus himself. He is merely the teller of the stories and yet one feels him to be just such an old man, for his character is interpreted by the stories he tells. Indeed, some one once asked the author, “Mr. Harris, really, don’t you suppose that Uncle Remus would steal chickens if he had a chance?” and Mr. Harris replied, “If I follow Uncle Remus all day, you surely can’t expect me to know what he does all night.”

Joel Chandler Harris in writing his “Uncle Remus” stories, did not labor to place them in logical sequence. He cared little about their value to students of comparative folk-lore, and had little notion of their evolution when he wrote them. The series cannot be placed into one great cycle that follows a hero through a number of incidents and at last brings him to the end, victorious. Mr. Harris told them for the pure enjoyment, and he was much surprised to find such a demand for a thing that was all pleasure and no work to him. He loved the simple tales because they were so near to nature’s heart, because they were full of primitive wonder, quaint flashes of humor, homely philosophy, and simple goodness.

The stories, however, readily group themselves into four classes.

I. Those that account for Certain Animal Traits, or Characteristics.
II. Stories with Brer Rabbit as a Hero.
III. Those stories told to the little Boy for their Ethical Value.
IV. Stories that attempt to Account for some Natural Phenomena.

Under the first group, Stories that account for certain animal characteristics, I have placed the following: